Boy Wonders

$29.95

"The most fascinating things about life are the banalities we so rarely discuss amongst ourselves but that we devote most of our energies to navigating. How did that day you've forgotten look? What did it feel like? Were you lonely? Did you have the sense you were progressing anywhere? Probably not. Yet string a few thousand of them together and that’s a life." —From Boy Wonders

Cathal Kelly grew up in the seventies and eighties, decades when dressing like Michael Jackson seemed like a good idea and The Beachcombers—"an adventure show about logging"—seemed to make sense. But beyond fashion missteps and baffling TV-show premises, Kelly's youth was a time of wonder, obsession and the thrill of discovery. Navigating an often fraught family life, Kelly sought refuge in books, bands, movies, games and at least one backyard hole. However, looking back he sees that his passion for George Orwell, Star Wars or The Smiths was never just about the book, movie or band. Rather, it was about the promise each new experience offered in helping him to make sense of the world, and how he might find a home within it.

By turns funny, elegiac and insightful, Boy Wonders is an unvarnished celebration of growing up and stumbling toward identity. It's about the good and the bad of those brief years when we find purpose without end, obsession without limit and joy in the strangest of places.